By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
The pandemic led to historic vacancies in New York City rental apartments. As reported by the NY Post, the exodus out of NYC led to very favorable conditions for renters. With an abundance of available inventory, and landlords desperate to offer discounts, renters are finding that now is the time to upgrade.
“This is a golden age to be a renter in the city right now,” said John Walkup, co-founder of UrbanDigs, a real estate data and analytics platform. “You have a ton of inventory so you have great choices, you’ve got landlords who actually need you, and so they’re offering concessions and they’re offering lower rents.”
Median Manhattan rents plummeted to a new low in the first quarter of 2021, reaching $2,700 per month, down from $3417 the previous year, and the lowest level it’s been since at least 2010, as per StreetEasy. Of Manhattan neighborhoods, Midtown saw the sharpest decline, with median rents falling to $2895, down 14.8 percent year over year. The Upper East Side also saw median rents slide 13.9 percent from the earlier year, to $2400. In Brooklyn, median rents fell to $2,390, declining 10 percent from the earlier year. In Queens, median rents fell below $200 for the first time since 2013.
New Yorkers have fled to greener pastures, leaving landlords to lure tenants by any means possible. Landlords have also been ailing from non-paying tenants and the new laws against evictions set in place amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In Manhattan, some 44 percent of landlords are offering concessions –such as a free month of rents, which is the highest rate ever recorded by StreetEasy. Brooklyn and Queens have both also reached record high concessions, at 25.4 percent and26.6 percent respectively.
“You’re looking at what you have right now and you’re looking at what you can have at a better rate — and what you can have is a better apartment at a better rate, [so] why not jump on it?” Said Raylen Margono, 26, who upgraded to a nicer Williamsburg apartment almost double in size, in a better neighborhood and is now paying $200 less for monthly rent.
The question remains, how long will the renters paradise last? Despite “fear that rents are going to start spiking,” supply remains high, Walkup said. “I honestly don’t see that happening for at least a year.”